The old banking prototype
N J Ravi Chander
I will always cherish my early days as an employee in the State Bank of India (SBI). Having cleared the written test – applied under the aegis of my late father M N Jayaraman – the bank invited me to attend an interview at their Regional Office in Bengaluru.
The quarter-hour interview conducted by a three-member panel had me facing a barrage of general knowledge questions and reading a paragraph of a Kannada daily. I came out triumphant and was soon appointed as a cashier at the Bengaluru Main branch on June 2, 1980.
A clean-shaven Agent (Branch Manager), immaculately suited and booted, headed the unit which had the reputation of being the first inland branch of the SBI – all the rest functioned along the coast. A road adjoining the bank bears its name. One learns that the bank vested the Agent with vast powers, including appointing workers, in an era when recruitment boards were non-existent.
Stories did the rounds of how the Agents used or misused the powers to cherry-pick only their close confidants for various vacant positions in the bank, in the process overlooking the applications put forth by others. Interestingly, the Circle head or the Chief General Manager (CGM) bore the title of Secretary and Treasurer in the old days.
In the pre-computer era, salaries were not credited to the bank account but paid in cash (crisp notes) after obtaining a signature over a revenue stamp affixed at one end of the lengthy salary register. It was not mandatory to have a savings account, and payday would see a long queue in front of the salary disbursing desk. Note counting machines were yet to arrive, and we learned the ropes by flipping the edges of a 200-page notebook with the aid of the thumb and the index finger. A head-cashier Mr.Ramaswamy trotted around with a foot-ruler and rap freshers on the knuckles if they got their counting wrong.
I recall the branch putting up a full-page advertisement in a local daily persuading locker hirers who had not operated their vaults for decades to call on the department. Following India gaining independence, many Europeans left for home, leaving many of their valuable possessions behind. Thousands of Indian and British nationals also perished in the two World Wars leaving scores of unclaimed lockers and deposits. Notifying the hirers to call on the bank was a formality that SBI undertook, and it ended up sealing the unclaimed vaults.
The name of a paternal uncle, major Sampingiraj, a decorated World War II veteran and an expert at defusing landmines also figured in the newspaper advertisement. He had tucked away his military decorations in a wooden box and housed them in a locker at the bank but had not operated on it for decades, though the bank continued to deduct the annual rent from his account. Only after my father produced the advertisement to him did he make a beeline to the bank to withdraw his prized possessions. He ultimately donated the medals to the Madras Engineering Group and Centre (MEG), and these have pride of place in its museum.
I also recall a terrifying episode of two colleagues and me getting trapped in a lift after stowing away the cash in the strong room at the basement – the branch was one of the first buildings in the city to possess this facility.
We had got into the elevator to return to our desks on the upper floor when the power failed – ruefully there were no generators back then. We remained literally in the dark for a while before the armed guard’s quick-witted ploy saved the day. He prised open the lift doors with a long bamboo pole and released the trapped occupants.
(The author is a former banker who has taken up writing as a pastime He writes for the Deccan Herald, The New Indian Express, The Tribune, The Hitavada, The City Tab, The Hans India and Kashmir Vision)
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